Research!

He woke up sometime in the second between rolling off the couch and hitting the floor. It was like that falling sensation you get when your body starts to lose consciousness before your brain, except it hurt. He groaned for a second, rubbing his head to check for bumps or blood, and looked over at the cable box. 12:00

The day was half over, but the house was full of light, and he actually felt pretty great. After breakfast, a shower, and a shave, he went down to the town library.

He sat in front of a microfiche machine for the first time since high school, scrolling through all the newspapers in the region from 1853. Bold headlines and grainy pictures were starting to blur together when he found the story of three twenty-one year old girls found half burned on his beach. Anna Falson, Jennifer Trull, and Beatrice Graham were farmers' daughters and best friends, all betrothed to strapping young lads. Townsfolk gossiped about their late night outings and the coincidences of strange occurrences while they were missing. Witchcraft was discussed and dismissed by a doctor who blamed a loose upbringing combined with alcohol and tendencies toward hysteria he observed in all the girls. Their deaths were deemed suicides after a perfunctory investigation into the theft of some personal items from their rooms in the days after their passing.

He left the library with prints of the few articles he could find.